USM Discovers Breach in Website Security

On February 22, 2008, the USM (University of Southern Mississippi) reported that the iTech security team of the university found a security breach in the Website of the school, when a routine inspection of the network was undertaken.

Homer Coffman, the Chief Information Officer, said that the Southern Mississippi informed the Cyber Crime Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and added that the division's officials reached campus for investigating the incident, as reported by hattiesburgamerican on February 23, 2008.

Agreeing to the comments of Homer, the university release published that an individual got the access to the server of the Website, as reported by hattiesburgamerican.

Homer also informed that there is not enough evidence of any misuse of the information. Just the site http://www.usm.edu got affected and the damage does not reach to other university-related sites for athletics, alumni, SOAR (Southern Online Accessible Records) ticket sales system or online registration system, as reported by ClarionLedger on February 22, 2008.

Homer also said that the present evidence exhibits that some information has been used to send out spam mails to the campus community. However, the USM caught the PC hacking in time and safeguarded the resources of campus on February 20, 2008 and also informed the officials.

After discovering the security breach, the site was closed for 12 hours on February 22, 2008 and the officials investigated the site, as reported by SunHerald, added Homer.

Homer said to the press that the authorities identified that the risk of identity theft is minimal but they find it necessary to inform the public. He also added that they cannot say anything about the loss of data till their investigation get over, but they will surely inform the victims about any leak of their information, as reported by hattiesburgamerican.

In May 2007, a similar case of breach emerged when an attacker accessed Social Security numbers of almost 22,000 present or ex-students at the University of Missouri by distorting the information through a Web page which was used to ask queries about the estimation of trouble reports to computer help desk of the university.

» SPAMfighter News - 3/3/2008